CHAPTEE XXL 



Storms An "inch" of Rain Atherina Presbyter Lophius Piscatorius Mr. Mortimer 

 Collins' misquotation from the Times. 



A FINER winter [January 1871] never was known all over the West 

 Highlands and Hebrides. Some tempestuousness is to be looked 

 for at this season, and some tempestuousness we have had, but 

 of actual winter rigour and cold we have hardly had a trace. Only 

 twice during the winter have we had any frost, and even then 

 it was but slight and of short duration. On several occasions, 

 however, we have had such terrible rainfalls as are only known 

 perhaps within sight of the mountain peaks of Jura and Mull and 

 Morven. On the 19th of January, and again on the 23d, the 

 rainfall within a given time was heavier than anything known even 

 with us for many years past. In about sixteen hours on the 19th, 

 4*19 inches fell, and quite as much, if not more, on the 23d. 

 Now, does the reader know what an inch of rain means 1 It means 

 a gallon of water spread evenly over a surface of something like 

 two square feet, or, to put it in a more striking and intelligible 

 form, it means a fall of a hundred tons upon an acre of land ; 

 so that in sixteen hours on the 19th upwards of four hundred 

 tons of rain fell on every acre of land for miles and miles around 

 us. It will be confessed that thus the country was for once at 

 least well soaked and saturated. All our rivers and mountain 

 torrents were, of course, in full flood, and throughout the night, 

 wKen it had calmed down a little, the " noise of many waters," 

 as you lay awake on your pillow and listened, made wild and 

 eerie music enough, to which the fitting bass was the boom of 



